wrapped in piano strings
by SerenLyall
Summary: They are home at last - home on Earth, home at their lake house. But while the Delta Quadrant is now far behind them, Kathryn's demons are still nigh at hand.


**disclaimer:** not mine, never will be :/

 **warnings:** referenced/implied rape/non-con

 **notes:** There's a lot that I could say here, but not a lot I really want to say - so I'll keep it brief. This was an incredibly personal piece to write, and it was both harrowing and cathartic to do so. It includes my first ever sex scene (so let me know how it was) - and just challenged my writing ability as a whole. I hope it turned out alright.

This fic is part of a larger collection of fics known as the "Counterpoint Vignettes" series, which can be found on archiveofourown. I highly recommend all of them - though dark, they're fantastic. I don't think it's necessarily necessary that you read them before this one, but doing so will make this fic much richer, and you'll understand a great deal more about it.

* * *

wrapped in piano strings

" _i sank into the sea  
wrapped in piano strings  
few words could open me  
but you knew them all"  
–radical face_

The nightmares begin the fifth night they are home.

She wakes from the first with a scream and a gasp. He can feel her trembling through the mattress even before he gathers her into his arms. The sweat of her terror is cold against his lips when he kisses her, first on the shoulder, then on her neck, then on her lips.

"Hush, my love," he murmurs. "You're safe."

He does not know what else to say, and she does not offer him any clues. So he simply holds her, strong arms around her body so newly frail, and lets her bury her face into his chest. Her breath is a drumbeat against his bare skin, quick and heavy and laden with the cadence of pain. She falls asleep like that, curled into his arms with her cheek pressed against his breast, and he holds her until the rising sun tints their apartment wall with rose and amber.

The second nightmare comes the day after they have made at last the journey to their lake house. She wakens with a whimper and a groan, body coiling into a tight ball on the porch chair angled to catch the sun. She is pale beneath the pink of a light sunburn when Chakotay lands on his knees beside her.

"Kathryn," he says, and then again, "Kathryn," when she does not seem to hear him. Her name is sonata and cantata—a whisper and a plea—and he takes her hand in his and begs her to come back to him.

It takes six minutes for Chakotay to coax her out of the ball she has curled into, and another four before she will reach for him. But when she does, she does so is with the grasping hands of a drowning woman. The symphony of her terror is written for a fraction of an instant across her face, before it is hidden against Chakotay's chest once more.

As before he holds her until her trembling eases, and as before her breath beats against his breast. She does not weep, but as Chakotay holds her while she draws in shuddering breath after shuddering breath, he wonders if perhaps she should.

The third nightmare comes that very night.

Chakotay wakes to the sense of sudden stillness that he has only known to mean death. He sits upright fast enough to make the world dance a spritely galliard around him, and he reaches for her with blind hands and blind terror. He finds her curled onto her side, her back toward him. She is utterly, utterly still.

He thinks, for a second, that she is dead.

But no. He hears her breath, shallow and gasping—a whisper, a murmur—and then through the calluses long-grown on his palms he can feel the minute shivering of her skin beneath his touch.

"Kathryn?" he asks, but she does not reply. He reaches for her, and when he rolls her over onto her back she follows his guiding hands with the tension of a piano string. Her eyes, open but unseeing, stare at the ceiling above their heads, and when he reaches for her hand he feels her tremble in quick, rapid staccato against his fingertips.

"Kathryn," he says again, and it is a croon, a lullaby. "Kathryn, my love, come back to me." He lays down, presses his chest against her shoulder, threads his fingers through her hair. "I'm here, my love," he murmurs against her skin, against the air that trembles between them. "I'm here."

She shudders, and she shakes, and slowly, slowly she returns. Chakotay feels the tension bleed from her body, feels the trembling turn slowly into shivers. And then she rolls into him, burying her face in his shoulder, grasps his shirt, his hand.

"Hold me," she begs, in a voice wound so tightly as to be nearly inaudible.

So Chakotay holds her. He wraps his arms around her and holds her tight against his chest, traps her legs between his knees and her hands between them, so that she is fully enclosed by his body. She hides her face against him, and as he feels her breath beat a ragged rhythm he wonders if she cries.

She falls asleep like that, and Chakotay drifts after her. With every tremble and every shift, however, he wakens again, shaken from sleep as if jolted by a drumbeat. In the moonlight that slants in through the windows beside their bed he watches her, and he loves her, and he wishes that she would open the last doors to her soul that she has yet kept locked tight—doors which, he thinks, might finally have been laid bare by those last terrible days in Devore space.

When the morning dawns, in pale streaks of rose and cerulean, Chakotay kisses his wife awake and asks her what she wants for breakfast. She smiles lazily at him, and after kissing him in return says, "Whatever you're in the mood for fixing."

She showers while Chakotay makes breakfast: scrambled eggs, fresh cut strawberries, and toast. She comes down the stairs, dressed but with hair still damp and hanging loose and curling around her shoulders, just as Chakotay pours her cup of coffee.

"Good morning," she says, and sits at the small table. She takes her mug in both hands, and after taking a moment to feel the warmth of the pewter against her palms, and smell the rich aroma of the coffee, she opens her eyes once more and looks at Chakotay. "You don't look as if you slept very well. Don't tell me in your old age new places keep you up."

Chakotay laughs as he sits across from her. "No," he says. "It wasn't that." He looks at her then, bright and happy and smiling, and asks carefully, "How about you? How did you sleep?"

"I slept fine," Kathryn says. She gives him a questioning look, one eyebrow half-cocked and the edges of her lips turned up. "Why?" she asks him. "Did I wake you?"

"You seemed restless is all," Chakotay says, with what he hopes is a careless shrug. "I thought you might have had nightmares."

Nightmares are not uncommon between the two of them. After the many things they have seen, both together and apart, it is an unsurprising fact of life. They are rarely mentioned, however, and even more rarely talked about. Thus, when Kathryn speaks, Chakotay is unsurprised to hear a sharp tone in her voice.

"No," she says, like crystal, and gives him a hard, flat look. "Not that I recall, anyway."

"So, what would you like to do today?" Chakotay asks, wanting to be done with the conversation. He does not want to press too hard, for fear of driving Kathryn deeper into herself. Already she shields all but the most minor of details about the darkest parts of her life from him; he does not want her to nail shut the doors he wants so desperately for her to open to him.

Kathryn leans back in her chair, still holding her coffee mug. "I think I'd like to finish unpacking," she says.

Their lake house is modest and, while comfortable, is not as luxurious as some of the other cabins spread out around Davis Lake. For just the two of them, however, it is perfect. The house is two stories, with a slope-roofed attic where Kathryn can paint, and a workshop for Chakotay down by the dock. The two extra bedrooms have already been offered on an open invitation to Tom and B'Elanna and their children, and to Harry and his wife Kell. The large kitchen, which overlooks the lake with a wall of windows, connects to a spacious living room, which in turn leads out to the porch that wraps around two sides of the house.

While the crew moving their things had set up the furniture the day before, and Chakotay and Kathryn had unpacked one box of dishes and another filled with bedsheets, most of their belongings are still stacked in piles in the upstairs hall and the living room. They had spent the afternoon resting, after a trip to town to pick up enough food to tide them over until Kathryn could finish programming the new replicators that they'd had installed—though Chakotay had promised that he would hand cook dinner for them as often as either of them wanted.

"Okay," Chakotay says, after a long moment of silence wherein he finishes his eggs. "Where would you like to start?"

"The kitchen I think," Kathryn says. She finally starts on her own eggs, placing the coffee mug down by her left elbow, a crystal note of pewter against wood singing through the silence.

Chakotay grins at her. "Sounds like a plan," he says.

She falls asleep on the couch after lunch. Chakotay stands for a while in the door to the kitchen and watches her sleep, calm and peaceful with one hand tucked beneath her head. She is gentler in sleep, Chakotay thinks, than she ever has been awake.

In that moment, he loves her more than sunlight or laughter or green grass.

He is halfway done stacking the plates in the cupboard beside the sink when her scream pierces the silence. Chakotay jumps, and drops the plate in his hands with a chiming crash. He is through the door and halfway to the couch before he even feels the pain of slivered glass in his right foot.

She has fallen to the ground, rolled off of the couch and crashed to the carpet. She lies there, at the foot of the couch, curled into a ball with her hands clasped over her head and her knees drawn to her chest. When Chakotay kneels beside her, ignorant of the blood dripping from his foot to stain the pale carpet red, he hears her murmur, again and again, "Please," in a fading etude of supplication.

"Kathryn," Chakotay calls, a harmony to her whispered pleas. "Kathryn, sweetheart, I'm here." He takes one of her hands in his, draws it slowly away from her head, brings it to his lips so that he can kiss each knuckle in turn. "Kathryn—"

"They won't stop hurting me."

Her voice is ragged, bereft.

Chakotay's heart bleeds to ice. He stills, breath in his mouth and Kathryn's hand clutched in his, and for a long moment he can do nothing but shudder in mind and soul at the words his wife just uttered. Then he blinks, drags in a breath, and the world turns from black and fury and ice to its natural pastel hues.

"It's okay, Kathryn," Chakotay manages to say. He moves closer, settles down onto the floor so that he is not looming over her, and presses his lips again to the back of her hand. "You're okay. You're safe."

She shudders, and hunches her shoulders, and her breath stutters like a fraying passacaglia. She does not look at him—but neither does she recoil when he reaches out, tentative and afraid, and touches her shoulder.

"Kathryn?" he asks, soft and gentle. "Do you know where you are?"

One breath. Two heartbeats. Three seconds. A triplet, hammered out by fear.

And then, "I'm in our house at Davis Lake," she says, soft and weak.

He gathers her to him then. She presses her cheek into his chest and her face into his shoulder, and for a terribly long moment she is only still. Then he feels her begin to shake, tiny tremors of taught muscles beneath thin skin—and then shudder and gasp as, with the suddenness of a tolling bell, she begins to sob.

"Shh," Chakotay croons, rocking her gently and running his fingers through her hair. "Shh, you're safe."

She quiets some time later. Still, though, Chakotay holds her, and she does not fight his strong embrace. She lists against him, weak and as tired as her silence, head buried in his shoulder, fingers wrapped in his shirt.

"Will you tell me about it?" Chakotay asks at last, once the silence has gnawed the comfort down to the bone.

He does not expect a response—or if she does reply, a curt dismissal—and so it takes Chakotay by surprise when, in a very small voice, Kathryn says, "I was so cold. Everything else blurred together into one terrible nightmare, but the cold—that I remember distinctly."

Chakotay thinks of her dead father, of her dead fiancé, and he tightens his arms around her body.

"It's why I can't stand being cold," she whispers. "When I'm cold I feel ghosts."

Her choice of words strikes him as odd, as if a key in his understanding has caught on a flat note. He thinks again of a dead fiancé, and of a dead father, and of the ice that buried them both alongside Kathryn's heart, and he wonders if that is the winter, amid a sea of winters, that Kathryn speaks of.

"What do you mean, 'feel ghosts'?" Chakotay asks softly, afraid that the sound of his voice will send Kathryn reeling back behind the duranium walls with which she has for so long protected, even from him, her deepest wounds.

She shakes her head. But then she says, "I still dream about them," and Chakotay thinks that she will not answer his question. But then she continues, saying, "I feel their hands, and their bodies, and their—" She shakes her head again and cuts herself off. "They were the only warmth in my world for…well, I don't really remember how long."

The world empties out beneath Chakotay's feet. He feels sick, blind, and helpless. He remembers his knuckles bloodied against the bag that last, terrible day in Devore space; he remembers Kathryn's voice as she said of Kashyk, curled up against him in their bed, "I don't want to think about him, or the things that led me to him, ever again." He remembers thinking that that was the end.

"Say something. Please." Kathryn's voice is quiet and meek.

Chakotay has never before heard her speak timidly. It pierces him down to the marrow.

"Oh sweetheart," he says, not knowing what to say next. And so, he does not speak; instead he shifts his arms, turning Kathryn's face toward his, and he leans down to press his lips to hers. "I love you," he murmurs into the kiss. "I love you so much."

She is tentative at first, content to let the kiss remain chaste and gentle—but then, as if a note had been struck, she turns into Chakotay and presses her tongue past his lips. "Show me you love me," she says—begs, pleads, demands—drawing back just far enough to look into his eyes.

There is something painful and terrible in her gaze, something that makes Chakotay's heart tremble. He wants it gone, wants it driven from his wife's heart and mind and soul, wants it to be banished forever from her very memory. He hopes, silently and selfishly, that he can be the one to exile it.

And so he kisses her, gently at first and then with more ardor, one hand cupping the back of her head, the other trailing over the swell of her breast and down to her hip. She kisses him back, reaches for him with both of her hands. Her fingertips ghost against his skin, creeping beneath his shirt until she can place both palms flush against his stomach.

"I love you," Chakotay says. His right hand trails around the curve of her hip, then steals beneath the hem of her shirt. He feels her shiver against his touch, and he smiles into their next kiss. Her shirt gathers against his wrist as his fingers climb up the slope of her spine, until at last he touches the soft cotton of her bra. It is as easy as a pinch and a flick, and the clasps are undone.

"I love you," Chakotay murmurs. He pulls her shirt over her head, her bra from her shoulders, and kisses his way from the corner of her mouth to her neck. She tilts her head, eyes sliding halfway shut, and a soft groan climbs from her throat as his hand slides down over her left breast to tease at her nipple. The sound makes him shudder, which in turn makes her laugh. He silences her with a kiss to the lips, then with another to her chin, and a third to her sternum. She turns, presses herself closer to him, and it is an easy twist for Chakotay to take the other nipple in his mouth. Her back arches, and another groan makes Chakotay shudder again.

"I love you," Chakotay whispers against her skin, and then presses her gently down to the soft carpet. He follows, kissing her breast once, twice, then shifting down so that he can kiss her stomach. His hands, trailing after, pull at the hem of her pants, pulling them and her underwear down over her hips. She kicks them off, looking up at him with eyes as bright a blue and as trusting as he has ever seen them, and then she is lying naked beneath him, pale and fragile and beautiful.

"I love you," Chakotay promises. He settles down between her legs, presses his mouth against her. She is warm against his tongue, and as he licks and sucks he can feel her tremble beneath his hands. She moves against him with every touch and his hands follow her, rubbing soft circles with his thumbs over the jut of her hipbones. He imagines her eyes, closed in half-found bliss, and her head thrown back against the floor, hands grasping at the carpet. Her cry, as she finally orgasms, is sweet and high—and then she laughs, bright and clear and unexpected, and meets his eyes when he crawls up to kiss her lips.

"I love you," Chakotay tells her. "And nothing, _nothing_ , will change that."

~*8*~

They go to bed early that night.

Dinner was Chinese food, ordered and eaten at a small diner in town. The booth they ate in was made of cheap synthetic leather, and the table was cracked and splintering; but the food delicious, and both of them laughed as Chakotay tried to teach Kathryn how to eat with chopsticks.

"Where'd you learn how to do this?" Kathryn asked, dropping a bite of orange chicken onto her plate for the third time.

"You'd be amazed the things you learned as a Maquis," Chakotay joked.

Full of good food and smiling laughter, they had gone bed when the moon was still young. Chakotay had kissed her, and Kathryn had kissed back. They fell asleep an hour later, Kathryn cradled in Chakotay's arms, the night air cooling the sweat on their bare skin and cleansing away the scent of their lovemaking.

Chakotay wakes some time later to find Kathryn's side of the bed empty and cold. Moonlight streams in through the open windows, white and silver and a thousand shades of spring. He props himself up on one elbow and looks toward the windows, toward the moonlight, toward the shadow standing before it all.

"Kathryn?" he asks.

The shadow standing at the window turns. "Go back to sleep," she says, and turns away again.

Chakotay stands. The air plays cool and soft against his bare shoulders and chest, and the floorboards are cold against his bare feet. He rounds the foot of the bed and crosses the floor to stand at Kathryn's back, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her close against him.

"What's wrong?" he asks, pressing the words into her hair with a soft kiss.

Kathryn shakes. "It's nothing," she says, soft and sweet and voice thick with the lie. "Go back to bed."

"I love you," Chakotay murmurs.

"I know," Kathryn replies.

"Then please," Chakotay says, voice crescendoing with plea, "let me in."

Kathryn shakes her head. "You don't need to know," she says. Her words are a prelude, soft and sad and full with the promise of words unspoken, unshared, unthought. "You don't need to bear this," she adds. "Not any more than you already have."

"I'm your husband," Chakotay says. "I'm sworn to help you bear your burdens. Please, sweetheart—let me in."

Kathryn is silent, and remains that way.

They return to bed some time after midnight. Kathryn lists on her feet in Chakotay's arms, silent and weak, and he half carries, half leads her back to their bed. He pulls her to him, and he falls asleep with his nose buried in her hair and with the sound of her breath in his ears.

The next morning dawns grey and cool, and Chakotay wakens to the soft sound of rain dancing onto the floor. He rises quickly to shut the windows, and then goes to find a towel to dry the puddle of rainwater on the wooden floorboards.

"I'm sorry," Kathryn says over breakfast. She picks at her eggs, swilling them around her plate and scrambling more than Chakotay thinks edible.

"For what?" Chakotay asks, looking up at her with a frown.

"For yesterday."

Chakotay's frown deepens. "You're going to have to be a little more specific," he says, a hollow feeling growing in his stomach.

"Yesterday afternoon," Kathryn says. She looks at him with dark eyes and an expression that Chakotay can only describe as self-loathing. "When I woke up from my nap, and told you…. Well. I'm sorry."

"Why are you apologizing?" Chakotay asks. The hollow feeling has grown to a yawning pit.

"I've dealt with my shit for this long without burdening you," Kathryn says, echoing what she had said the night before. There is a ringing tone of anger in her voice. "I should keep doing so."

Chakotay sits forward in his chair, somber and aching in heart and mind. "No," he says, more forcefully than he means. He softens his voice, and says again, "No. Kathryn, you can't keep burying this. It's rotting you away—I've seen it happen, and I'm seeing it happen."

Kathryn frowns. "What do you mean?" she asks.

Chakotay sighs and fiddles with the fruit on his plate for a moment, thinking. "You've been quieter, ever since we got back from the Delta Quadrant. And those last few days before we reached Devoran space…" He trails off, and at long last looks up at Kathryn through his lashes.

Kathryn does not meet his gaze. She looks at her own plate, then at her fingers clasped together in her lap, then at the grain of the table. "I'm sorry," she says at last. The words sound like lead, or blood.

"You don't need to apologize," Chakotay says softly. He wonders if that is a lie, but he does not care.

Kathryn stands, gathering her plate and fork and untouched glass of orange juice. "If you'll excuse me," she says, still not looking at Chakotay.

He watches her recycle her food and put her plate in the sink. She leaves the kitchen without another word, and a moment later Chakotay hears the front door slam shut.

Chakotay waits an hour, and when Kathryn does not come back, he goes out to look for her. He walks down to the lake, and then along the shore—but there is no sign of her. After another hour, in which it rains in fitful bursts and starts, Chakotay returns to the house feeling empty and bereaved.

He showers, and dresses in comfortable sweat pants and a loose t-shirt, and then calls Tuvok. Tuvok answers after half a minute, looking calm and healthy and as logical as ever. He does not smile when he sees Chakotay, but Chakotay thinks there is a soft hint of delight in the stark black of his eyes.

"What can I do for you, Captain?" Tuvok asks.

Chakotay sighs and runs a hand through his wet hair. Suddenly he doubts his wisdom in calling Tuvok. He is Kathryn's oldest and best friend, and she loves only him and her mother and sister more Tuvok. But all the same, disquiet and uncertainty creep into Chakotay's mind as he sits, silent and frozen, in front of the display.

"Chakotay?" Tuvok asks, when Chakotay is silent for nearly a minute.

"It's Kathryn," Chakotay says at last, all at once.

Tuvok's eyebrows crease. "What about her?" he asks.

Chakotay drums his fingers against the desktop, and wonders how much to say to Tuvok. "She's been having…difficulties," he says finally.

"What kind of difficulties?" Tuvok prompts when Chakotay again falls silent.

"She's been sleeping badly," Chakotay admits. "And she's hardly eaten the last couple of days—even when I make her food and we sit down to eat together. And then we had a conversation this morning over breakfast, and afterwards she left the house and I haven't seen her since."

"It cannot have been more than four or five hours since she left," Tuvok says. "I am not entirely certain why you have contacted me. Unless there is something particular going on that you think I may be able to help you with?"

Chakotay shrugs. He is regretting calling Tuvok more with every passing second. "You've known her longer than anyone else, except her family," Chakotay says. "And she's said before that you know more about her than anyone else."

Tuvok inclines his head. "That may be true. But I still do not see how you hope for me to help you."

"I thought maybe you could help shed some light on what's going on. Or how to handle it. Or even just if it's happened before."

"You are her husband," Tuvok says. "And before that you were her commander for many years. You have seen her both at her best, and at her worst. That is no different than me."

"But I think it might be," Chakotay says. "She and I have never talked about what happened to her when she was a Cardassian prisoner. Or what happened with the Devoran bastard." Chakotay cannot bring himself to say Kashyk's name.

"Yet you know all the same what happened, do you not?" Tuvok asks.

"Only the barest bones of it."

"And you think I know more?"

Chakotay shrugs again. "I thought you might."

"And you thought that, if I did, I would tell you?"

"Maybe." It suddenly strikes Chakotay how unlikely it is that Tuvok would be willing to impart that information with him, even if he does know. "I'm sorry, Tuvok," Chakotay says. "I shouldn't have bothered you with this. I know you're busy captaining the _Reprisal_."

"No apologies are necessary, Chakotay," Tuvok says. "And for what it is worth, might I suggest you simply talk to her? Do not dance around the subject. Be blunt. She may grow angry—but you know how great of a tool her anger can be, even against herself."

Chakotay smiles. "I do know," he says.

Tuvok nods. "Good. I must return to my duties now."

"Thank you, Tuvok," Chakotay says, and as the words leave his mouth, he realizes he truly means it.

"Live long and prosper, Chakotay," Tuvok says.

"Live long and prosper," Chakotay replies, and the smile he gives Tuvok before their call disconnects is genuine.

Kathryn comes home after dark. Her hair drips onto her shoulders and her clothes are plastered to her body, and there is an unhealthy flush in her cheeks. Chakotay herds her to the bathroom and fetches a dry pair of pants and a tank top while Kathryn strips out of her wet clothes. They fall in a limp and sodden pile on the bathroom floor.

When Chakotay goes to pick them up, however, Kathryn stops him. She is naked, raw and vulnerable, and she forces Chakotay's head up with a hand under his chin.

"Do you love me?" she asks.

"Of course I love you," Chakotay says. He frowns. "Do you doubt that?"

Kathryn shakes her head, but in her eyes is a note of uncertainty.

Unsure if he is doing the right thing, Chakotay reaches up and pulls the shirt over his head. He drops it to the floor beside her wet clothes, and then pulls down his pants.

"I love you," Chakotay says, standing naked, raw, vulnerable before her. "And there is nothing—" and he reaches across the gulf between them and cups her face to his, presses his lips against hers in a soft kiss, "—nothing that will change that."

Her hands are ice against his skin as they rise to press against his chest. "You don't know who I am," she says, her hands a wall between them.

Chakotay reaches up and takes her hands in his. "Don't I?" he asks.

Kathryn shakes her head. "I'm broken," she says. The words are shards of glass.

Chakotay weighs his words. What he says next could break or heal. "Maybe," he says at last. "But broken things can be mended. And you aren't beyond healing."

Kathryn shakes her head again. "You don't know the things I've done."

"Like Kashyk?" Chakotay asks. The name is bitter and tastes like ash on his tongue.

Kathryn flinches and does not respond.

"Like the holograms I know you used to run?"

She flinches again, and will not look Chakotay in the eye.

"Like Justin?"

And suddenly she is angry. She looks up at him at last, and her eyes are blue flame. "How dare you?" she snaps. "Justin was a good man."

"I didn't say he wasn't," Chakotay replies steadily. "But—"

"But nothing." Kathryn glares. "You shouldn't talk about what you don't understand."

"Then explain it to me," Chakotay begs.

"I'm fucking broken," Kathryn all but shouts. Her voice is a thousand strings screaming, a symphony crashing; her eyes are molten, and full of ragged wrath. "The Cardassians fucked me, and fucked me, and fucked me, until I came from the pain and the humiliation and the horror of it all. And it ruined me. It ruined me, Chakotay, and there's no going back from that."

She stands trembling, hands clenched in fists at her sides, face flushed with fever and fury. She is glass, and bone, and steel.

And she breaks.

"I'm broken," she says, and chokes on the sob that crawls out of her mouth. "I'm…"

Chakotay catches her as she stumbles and nearly falls. He sinks to the floor and takes her with him, cradles her in his arms on the smooth tile.

"I'm here, Kathryn," he murmurs, and strokes her hair as she sobs. "I'm here. And I'm not going anywhere."

And she weeps, and curls into him, and her hands grasp at his forearms. She clings to him like a woman drowning—and Chakotay holds her head above the water, holds her warm, holds her safe as she shatters.

~*8*~

They lie curled together in bed an hour later. Kathryn has showered and dried her hair, and is dressed in pants and tank top. Chakotay holds her close, feeling her tremble from the fever and the fading shock of her outburst and following breakdown.

They are silent.

There are no more words to be spoken—no more that need be spoken. Not here, not now. Later, perhaps. Later, definitely. But for now there is only silence, heavy and full and content.

 _I love you_ , Chakotay thinks.

Kathryn sighs, and nestles closer against him.

 _I love you too_ , he imagines her to say.

A soft kiss to the back of her head. His arms tighten around her waist.

There will be time for talk, and time for action. There will be pain—that much, at least, Chakotay knows—and there will be fury, and despair, and apathy.

But for now all is silent. All is well


End file.
